From slave roots to Senate race: Allen West bets on Wesley Hunt’s Cinderella story
If you’re looking for a Cinderella story in the Texas GOP Senate race, retired Lt. Col. Allen West thinks former Apache helicopter pilot Wesley Hunt might just be it.
Mr. West — a former Florida congressman, ex-Texas GOP Chair, and current head of the Dallas County Republican Party — told The Washington Times on Thursday that he cast his early vote for the congressman.
“I voted for Wesley Hunt in the primary,” he said. “I don’t have any problems with that being known. When you talk about the Cinderella story, he might be it.”
It’s a notable endorsement for a candidate who had been largely written off for months.
FILE – In this Wednesday, Sept. …
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For Mr. West, it’s a point of pride. As a member of Congress in 2011, he founded the Guardian Fund PAC to support conservative veterans and minorities seeking elected office.
The 44-year-old Mr. Hunt is a direct descendant of slaves — one who graduated from West Point, flew dozens of combat missions over Baghdad, and won a congressional seat in Texas as a stalwart conservative.
Now he’s running for Senate against 72-year-old Sen. John Cornyn and 63-year-old state Attorney General Ken Paxton — and few gave him much of a shot when he entered the race.
If no candidate clears a majority on March 3, the top two finishers head to a May runoff. Early voting is already underway.
Mr. Hunt is running third in most polls.
Washington Republicans have made no secret of their skepticism.
Before Mr. Hunt even announced in October, reports surfaced that the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to his donors urging them to talk him out of running, calling his bid a “vanity project that could cost Republicans control of the Senate and dilute our resources.”
He ran anyway, convinced Mr. Cornyn was beatable and that he could carve out a lane as a less polarizing conservative alternative to Mr. Paxton.
There may be something to that.
Mr. Cornyn, a Texas fixture for decades, has struggled to excite the party’s base, which views him as too cozy with Washington.
Mr. Paxton, meanwhile, carries enough personal and political baggage that his electability remains a persistent question.
That’s the opening Mr. Hunt has tried to walk through, positioning himself as an outsider and antidote to a political system that’s left voters frustrated.
His rivals have taken notice. Both camps have poured millions into attack ads aimed at slowing his momentum.
Mr. Cornyn’s team has hammered Mr. Hunt over his congressional attendance record — including a missed vote on deporting criminal illegal immigrants — and his support for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“But Wesley Hunt did show up to vote one time: for Hillary Clinton,” the narrator in one Cornyn ad says. “That’s indefensible.”
A pro-Paxton group delivered a similar critique, highlighting Mr. Hunt’s votes for both Mrs. Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
“Wesley Hunt voted to put Clinton and Obama in the White House, and we can’t trust him in the Senate,” the narrator says.
Things have also turned ugly.
Mr. Hunt filed criminal charges this week against a Conryn campaign advisor, accusing him of putting his family at risk by posting unredacted documents that included the lawmaker’s personal address, driver’s license number, and Social Security number.
Mr. Hunt, meanwhile, says the attacks leveled against him show his message resonates with voters and that the race is closer than his rivals want to admit.
He has also hit back.
“In 2004, I graduated from West Point and joined the Army,” he said in a recent online ad. “By then, John Cornyn had already been a politician for 20 years. Now John Cornyn is spending millions lying about me in a desperate attempt to stay in office.”
“Here is the truth: I risked my life in combat. In Congress, I stood with President Trump since Day One,” Mr. Hunt said. “This is our moment to end the status quo.”
